Hasn't he lived long enough? Why not? I could take him like a thief in the night.

This is how the Thief thinks. He serves death, the vacuum, the unknown. He’s always waiting. Always there.

Seventeen-year-old Nina Barrows knows all about the Thief. She’s intimately familiar with his hunting methods: how he stalks and kills at random, how he disposes of his victims’ bodies in an abandoned mine in the deepest, most desolate part of a desert.

Now, for the first time, Nina has the chance to do something about the serial killer that no one else knows exists. With the help of her former best friend, Warren, she tracks the Thief two thousand miles, to his home turf—the deserts of New Mexico.

But the man she meets there seems nothing like the brutal sociopath with whom she’s had a disturbing connection her whole life. To anyone else, Dylan Shadwell is exactly what he appears to be: a young veteran committed to his girlfriend and her young daughter. As Nina spends more time with him, she begins to doubt the truth she once held as certain: Dylan Shadwell is the Thief. She even starts to wonder . . . what if there is no Thief?

Hello Margot! We are super excited to have you in our FFBC tours.

Favorite Book?

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë. I see it more as a twisted family saga than a love story.

“I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go!” — Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark

What do you find yourself “Fangirling” over?

Right now, Vera Farmiga as Norma Bates on Bates Motel. She is so outspoken and angry and funny and I love it. Plus she has the best retro outfits ever. Norma and Sheriff Romero are my OTP.

If you could meet one author, dead or alive, who would it be?

Pauline Kael, who used to write movie reviews for the New Yorker. She was a role model who showed me female authors could be smart, snarky, and opinionated.

Something to say to our Book Addicts?

Thank you so much for having me! It makes me so happy to see people excited about books. I’m honored and excited to be here, and I hope you like The Killer in Me!

Could you tell our Book Addicts a little bit about The Killer in Me? And what’s the Thief?

The Killer in Me is about a seventeen-year-old girl, Nina, who believes she has a mysterious connection with a serial killer. The Thief in the Night is what the killer calls himself, because he wants to be invisible and inevitable like death itself. He will travel a thousand miles to “steal” a random person away in the night, then hide the body, and the cops never even know he exists.

Can you tell us a bit more about Nina and her personality? What’s so interesting about this character?

Nina believes she has seen cold-blooded murders happen through the Thief’s eyes, but she has no proof and no way of stopping future ones. Worse, she’s not a hundred percent sure she really has seen the things she thinks she’s seen. What if those crimes never really happened? Or what if she somehow did them herself? When we first meet her, Nina is self-doubting and scared of her own shadow. But as she does detective work, trying to prove the Thief actually exists, she gains strength and comes into her own.

How did you come up with the story? Did you find inspiration in any other story/movie/show and how has this affected your writing?

A real person similar to the Thief murdered two people a few miles from where I live. It had a big impact on our normally safe community. So that was the seed of the story. It took us more than a year to find out what really happened that night, because the killer was so good at covering his tracks. So I imagined how it would feel to be the only person who knew who the killer was, and unable to prove it.

While I was writing my second draft, I started watching the great TV show The Fall, in which Gillian Anderson chases a killer who’s similar to the Thief in certain ways. (For instance, he has a normal life and loving family at home.) That fueled my excitement to keep working on the book.

I loved writing all the scenes of Nina and Warren’s cross-country road trip, because that was my fantasy as a teen—to take a summer road trip across the U.S. with a cute boy!

If you had to pick one song to be the Theme Song for The Killer in Me – Which one would you pick?

“Disarm” by the Smashing Pumpkins. Yep, my title is right there in the lyrics! And while those lyrics didn’t inspire the story, they apply pretty well to it.

Imagine that we get to see your book on the big screen (how awesome would that be?). Who would you pick to play your characters?

Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) would play Nina. Tom Holland (Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War) would play Warren. A younger version of Michael Shannon (Zod in Man of Steel) would play the Thief.

Is there any recommendations you could give your readers to be in the “perfect mood” to read The Killer in Me (specific music, snacks…)?

Lock all your doors, keep all the lights on, check under the bed before you start, and have plenty of road-trip food on hand. (My characters like Twix bars and Funyons.) Or you could be more daring and read under the covers with a flashlight.

What’s next for you?

A YA thriller about a girl who’s been raised to believe using the Internet could kill her, and what happens when she meets a boy who wants to put the Internet directly inside our heads.

I was raised in the wilds of New York by lovely, nonviolent parents who somehow never managed to prevent me from staying up late to read scary books. I now work at an alt-weekly newspaper in Vermont, where my favorite part of the job is, of course, reviewing scary books and movies. The Killer in Me is my first novel.

After seven years living as Alexandra Gastone, Milena Rokva is now free to be her true self, if only she knew who that was or had time to find out. Milena is in a race against time to bring down Perun, the very organization that trained her as a spy. Perun is no longer content to use their network of sleeper agents to protect her homeland and is maneuvered to take control of the world’s energy markets, sending the globe into chaos.

Working with her surrogate grandfather, Albert Gastone, his CIA friend Brad and her old handler, Varos, Milena finds herself embroiled in an epic spy game teamed with friends whose endgames do not necessarily align with her own. The only person Milena can truly trust is herself.

Can Milena take down Perun, protect her fellow cadets and make a life for herself with her boyfriend, Grant, as well as the friends and family she’s come to love as Alexandra Gastone? Buckle in for a wild ride as the Alexandra Gastone duology comes to a close.

T.A. Maclagan is a Kansas girl by birth but now lives in the bush-clad hills of Wellington, New Zealand with her Kiwi husband, son and four pampered cats. With a bachelor’s degree in biology and a Ph.D. in anthropology, she’s studied poison dart frogs in the rainforests of Costa Rica, howler monkeys in Panama and the very exotic and always elusive American farmer. It was as she was writing her ‘just the facts’ dissertation that T.A. felt the call to pursue something more imaginative and discovered a passion for creative writing. They Call Me Alexandra Gastone is her first novel.

Ever since she was a baby, the words people use to describe Elyse have instantly appeared on her arms and legs. At first it was just "cute" and "adorable," but as she's gotten older and kids have gotten meaner, words like "loser" and "pathetic" appear, and those words bubble up and itch. And then there are words like "interesting," which she's not really sure how to feel about. Now, at age twelve, she's starting middle school, and just when her friends who used to accept and protect her are drifting away, she receives an anonymous note saying "I know who you are, and I know what you're dealing with. I want to help." As Elyse works to solve the mystery of who is sending her these notes, she also finds new ways to accept who she is and to become her best self.

Hello Abby! We are super excited to have you in our FFBC tours.

Thank you! Excited to be here.

Favorite Book?

So hard to decide! My all-time favorite is Frindle by Andrew Clements, but there are so many books I love.

Favorite TV show?

Big Brother. I’ll need to be pried away from the TV this summer because it’s on a glorious three times a week.

Favorite movie?

You’ve Got Mail.

Your Favorite Song?

It changes a lot. Right now I’m really into Adele’s Send My Love. So catchy!

Michael Moscovitz from Princess Diaries. He is just so wonderfully nerdy – and really cute, too!

Favorite Quote?

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” – Lemony Snicket

What do you find yourself “Fangirling” over?

Bookstores and libraries for sure. Cool teachers, librarians, and booksellers. Also the National Spelling Bee because it’s the best night of TV ever.

If you could meet one author, dead or alive, who would it be?

Probably A.S. King. I’m a HUGE fan of her books. She’s so brilliant! I actually met her once but I was so excited/nervous that I’m pretty sure I said something like “skghsdgjsggerumm.” If I ever get the chance to meet her again, I’m going to try my hardest to say something more like “hi.”

Could you tell our Book Addicts a little bit about Sticks & Stones?

Sticks & Stones is the story of Elyse, a twelve-year-old girl who has a rare skin disorder where the names others call her appear on her arms and legs and stick like temporary tattoos. The good ones soothe and the bad ones itch. Early in the book, Elyse discovers that the things she thinks about herself appear as well.

Can you tell us a bit more about Elyse and what is happening to her?

Elyse has been dealing with CAV (short for Cognadjivisibilitis) her entire life, so she’s pretty used to seeing the words on her skin. But things change when she starts middle school. The words become increasingly negative, and Elyse starts wearing long sleeves and long pants all the time in order to cover them up. When she starts receiving mysterious notes from someone who says they know what she’s dealing with and wants to help, she has to decide if she wants to follow this person’s instructions.

Since in Sticks & Stones it seems like Elyse is trying to find herself after being labeled all the time, can you pick a song that would describe her?

I think Brave by Sara Bareilles would describe Elyse and her situation pretty well.

How did you come up with the story? Did you find inspiration in any other story/movie/show and how has this affected your writing?

I was really inspired by the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio. When I was working as a school librarian, I couldn’t ever keep it on the shelf – kids loved it so much! I think Auggie, the main character, has a huge impact on readers. It seems like a lot of middle grade readers feel different from their peers in some way. I want them to know that it’s okay to feel different, and that you can still love yourself and be kind to yourself no matter what life throws your way.

Tell us your favorite quote from Sticks & Stones.

My #1 favorite is kind of a spoiler, so I’ll go with my #2 fave:

“’You don’t really wanna be with me.’

I was pretty sure I did, actually.”

These lines make me laugh every time I think about them. Haven’t we all been there at some point in our lives with a crush? Those experiences, though cringe-worthy at the time, make us strong. Unfortunately for Elyse, this is just the beginning of her middle school struggles.

Is there a specific scene that you had the most fun to write?

The scene at the fund-raising show, when Elyse is about to perform and is super nervous, was a ton of fun to write. There’s a big long paragraph that’s all one sentence, and it kind of seems like Elyse is saying/thinking it all in one breath, and that’s sort of the way I wrote it, too. I got right in the moment with her. I felt her nerves like they were my own, and when she took a breath at the end, so did I.

If you had to pick one song to be the Theme Song for Sticks & Stones – Which one would you pick?

Oh man! I probably shouldn’t say Brave again (such a great song, though) so I’ll go with Beautiful by Christina Aguilera.

Imagine that we get to see your book on the big screen (how awesome would that be?). Who would you pick to play your characters?

That would be SO awesome! This is hard. Maybe Daisy Tahan (from Little Fockers) for Elyse and Aubrey Anderson-Emmons (Lily on Modern Family) for Jeg. (She’s a little young right now, but the movie probably wouldn’t come out for a couple years, right? Ha, ha.) Quvenzhane Wallis for Olivia, and August Maturo (from Girl Meets World – he’ll get a little older before the movie comes out, too) for Nice Andy. I’ll keep thinking about the rest!

Is there any recommendations you could give your readers to be in the “perfect mood” to read Sticks & Stones (specific music, snacks…)?

Well, Elyse is super into cupcakes (and, okay, so am I), so I definitely recommend getting one of those to go along with your reading experience. (Just be careful not to get frosting all over the book. I learned this the hard way.) As for music, probably something upbeat and fun – anything that makes you feel like the awesome person you are.

Is there any advice you could give to middle graders who are in the same situation as Elyse?

Be kind to yourself. You deserve it.

What’s next for you?

I’m finishing up BUBBLES, my 2017 book, and working on a few other manuscripts. I hope to keep writing books for as long as the middle grade book world wants to keep me around :)

Abby Cooper lives in Minnesota with her miniature poodle, Louis, and a whole bunch of books. A former teacher and school librarian, her favorite things in the world (besides writing) are getting and giving book recommendations and sharing her love of reading with others. In her spare time, she likes eating cupcakes, running along the Mississippi River, and watching a lot of bad reality TV.